TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A team of students from The University of Alabama Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering was named a finalist out of 15 teams in the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office and University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics 2025 Undergraduate Hypersonic Flight Design Competition. This competition involved creating an “unpowered, high lift-to-drag, hypersonic projectile for low altitude operation” to be maneuvered at extremely high speeds of Mach 5-8, according to the UCAH.
The team is comprised of six students: John Faber, Katie Barry, Ethan Potter, Jacob Colon, James Clark and Matthew Christensen, who are currently enrolled in ME 490, the Department of Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Project. The team is led by Drs. Joshua Bittle, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and C. Taber Wanstall, from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, and supported by collaborators at EH Group Inc., including Ed Hackett, Dr. Charles O’Neill and Scott Neff.
Bittle and Wanstall said this project gave their students the chance to apply their theoretical research to a real-world design challenge.
“Participation in the 2025 UCAH Design Competition provided our students with a rare opportunity to work on a fully integrated hypersonic vehicle concept under realistic mission constraints,” said Wanstall. “Unlike a traditional classroom assignment, this project required them to synthesize aerodynamics, aerothermal analysis, structures, stability and control, mass properties, and trajectory optimization into a single flight-ready design. They were responsible not only for performance prediction but also for manufacturability, cost considerations and experimental validation planning.”
Wanstall noted that this project required the students to think like working engineers, going beyond theory to design a projectile that would face real thermal loads in extreme conditions. Further, through this project, students were given insight into the process of large-scale hypersonic research programs, preparing them for future potential careers in government and industry research.
The team began their initial concept development and studies during the fall 2025 semester, working under tight deadlines to absorb information and conduct analyses to ultimately create a refined design. According to Bittle and Wanstall, the students’ work advances the challenge of maneuverable hypersonic flight at low altitude, an area of research with obstacles such as aerodynamic heating, structural loading and stability challenges.
“By exploring an unpowered, high lift-to-drag configuration capable of sustained maneuvering at extreme high-speed conditions, the team examined design trade spaces that are directly relevant to next-generation hypersonic glide systems,” Wanstall said.
As finalists in the competition, the team will work with the Army Research Lab to fabricate and test their design at the ARL Gun Launch facility this summer.
“The test will be performed by the ARL research engineers, but we hope to enable as many of the students that are available to travel to the facility and observe the testing,” said Bittle. “The results will be provided back to test how theoretical design compared with the gun launch test.”
The testing of this project will also support the improvement of predictive tools for high-enthalpy, low-altitude hypersonic flow, according to Bittle and Wanstall, as the experimental data gathered from the test at the ARL can assist the formation of improved modeling.
Winning teams will present their designs at the 2026 UCAH Forum in late summer.